


where the lost, lonely roam

by shipwreckinabottle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, but not really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 05:56:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15943163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipwreckinabottle/pseuds/shipwreckinabottle
Summary: -When Bucky came to one morning, enveloped by soft cushions, warm sunlight pleasant against his face, the vestiges of a beautiful dream lingering, dancing on the edges of his consciousness, he knew something was wrong.Something was horribly, fucking wrong.-In which Bucky wakes up one day and finds himself transported to a strange medieval world, tasked by his lord to hunt down an evil witch.





	where the lost, lonely roam

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt I got for this pairing. 
> 
> Like most of my prompts, a 1k word one-shot ended up way longer than expected... 
> 
> Not beta-ed, let me know if there are any mistakes / if you'd like to help out.
> 
> Also, if you'd like to prompt me too, [Click Here.](https://shipwreckinabottle.tumblr.com/post/177321349553/mcu-one-shot-promts-aka-i-need-more-writing)

_The man came to in a sudden, lungs on fire, limbs a painful twist in tight confines. His entire world was dark, vision restricted by a heavy breathing mask strapped tight to his face. Hot air burned down his throat, thick and heavy, and he struggled to breathe, to understand and make sense of his surroundings._  
  
_A minute passed, and someone shut off the oxygen. He started to choke, gasping at air that was no longer there. His body convulsed in painful spasms, bound extremities digging into restraints, metal cutting into flesh._  
  
_Darkness consumed him whole. Then ice water chilled him back into the living, and along came precious air. Another minute passed, and like clockwork, the oxygen turned off once more. Over and over again. During his thirty-seventh time falling into darkness, he stopped counting._  
  
_When the mask was finally removed, a powerful light greeted him, inches from his face. He squeezed his eyes shut, only for rough hands to pry them apart, a steep contraption placed over his face like a cage, keeping them wide open._  
  
_It was days before they allowed him to blink._  
  
_Then they threw him into a tiny box; the size of a cupboard, without even the space to bend his knees. There was a second’s reprieve, before loud music blasted the small space, as the temperature inside rose until his sweat sizzled on the ground._  
  
_When they finally let him out, he was in a daze, a loud insistent ringing in his ears. They had to drag him to the next room. White, surgical, with fluorescent lighting, and the distinct smells of disinfectant and bleach. There were no visible windows, no markers as to indicate where they were, only a single table and chair at the center of the room._  
  
_The guards forced him onto the stool, naked and shivering, on the verge of being once more lost to darkness when another man entered. The newcomer was an older male, bearded and grey, a noticeable limp in his walk. His suit was military, but donned an unrecognizable insignia; a strange symbol, enveloped in brushes of red._  
  
_The newcomer stopped in front of the shivering man. “What is your name?” he asked in English, accent predominantly Russian. It didn’t sound as much of a question as it did a confirmation._  
  
_“J-James, James Buchannan Barnes,” the man said, the strength in his voice betraying his frail state. “United States Army Sergeant… Serial Number: 52159551.”_  
  
_“What is your name?” the older man asked again._  
  
_“James Buchanan Bar—”_  
  
_He barely managed half a sentence before one of the guards grabbed him from behind and slammed him facedown against the table, the impact against steel splitting his lip, taste of blood fresh in his mouth. He tried to struggle, but the other guard grabbed his left arm and pinned it straight._  
  
_The older man leaned closer. “What is your name?” he asked again._  
  
_“J-James,” he breathed hard. “Bucha-” Then he screamed as older man’s knife sliced into the back of his palm, through sinew and flesh, until it clanged loud against the metal surface beneath._  
  
_“What is your name!” the guard twisted his arm, close to an unnatural angle._  
  
_“Jame-”_  
  
_The sound of bones snapping echoed through the halls of the Red Room._

 

* * *

  
  
It was a strange sensation, to wake from a dream of a memory long past.  
  
_The Red Room_.  
  
One of the deadliest Soviet Cold War Programs. In charge of retrieving him from the ice, removing his memories and indoctrinating him to their cause; it was the faceless men of the Red Room who tortured him, took his arm and replaced it with a cybernetic appendage, and turned him into their own killing machine.  
  
It’d been a while since he’d last thought of the men of the Red Room. Most of them were already long dead, either from old age or in an unmarked grave in the frozen wastes of Russia, forcefully retired by the Kremlin in a “house cleaning” operation after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  
  
Those who survived, or were given positions in the new government, he’d found. It was the first thing he did after breaking free of HYDRA’s mental implants. He didn’t care who they were, HYDRA or the Red Room, he put faces to the faceless men and, one at a time, he hunted them all down.  
  
He made them bleed. He made them beg for their lives. Then he put a bullet between their eyes anyways. He showed no mercy, no compassion, exactly like how they’d trained him to be.  
  
And when he struck the final name off the lists, he returned back to the United States, like a good soldier at the ends of his mission; he showed up at the Avengers Facility and turned himself in. The entire team showed up, prepared for a fight, but he did not resist. He simply got onto his knees, placed his arms behind his head, and allowed himself to be cuffed.  
  
He was prepared to be incarcerated. Even prepared for the electric chair, and that’d be a blessing compared to the sins he’d committed.  
  
But the one thing he wasn’t prepared for… was to be given a home.  
  
Steve was the first to welcome him to the Avengers Initiative. No questions asked. Even though Steve had plenty. The rest of the Avengers, some understandably warier of him than others, eventually accepted him into their family as well.  
  
Family was a strange word. He knew he had a family before, and Steve, though not maternal, was part of it once. But the men of the Red Room took those memories from him. And whatever he had in the 1940s, it was no longer a part of him, long faded, like the morning’s sand in the evening’s tide.  
  
But even so, there were times, like during the team’s weekly Thursday night movie session, in his seat at the far corner of the room, alone with his back to the wall and every point of egress in clear sight, he could feel it… a sense of _belonging_ , so fleeting it didn’t feel real, as if nothing more than a figment of his imagination. But it was there. He could feel it, however small, lingering at the edges of his psyche, at itch that just wouldn’t go.

 

* * *

  
  
An hour later and more tossing and turning, Bucky gave up on sleep. Nothing but more demons awaited him there. Plenty of them with his own face, memories of the things he’d done under Soviet control; the people he’d killed, too many to remember, haunted him, thousands of them swarming him, suffocating him under their weight; he couldn’t breathe, like he was once more under the gas mask in the Red Room.  
  
There were nights when he woke with his gun in hand, unable to differentiate between nightmare and reality. Most of those nights, relief only came when he noticed his surroundings, but there were also nights when he wondered if it was all a dream, if it was all a way for his mind to cope while he still laid unconscious in the Red Room, gas mask over his face and limbs bound down tight.  
  
The kitchen was empty this time of night. Most of the Avengers did not stay in the new building, and those who did, knew better than to engage him in casual conversation at 4 in the morning.  
  
Sam tried once, and was rewarded with an iron vice around his neck.  
  
Bucky apologized the next day, the act of it as difficult as one of his toughest missions, but Sam accepted it with nothing less than a smile, and an apology of his own as well. The two of them spent the next hour talking about their time in the war and the people they’d lost before Sam was called away on a mission.  
  
Sam still approached him for conversation these days, but no longer late at night, when Bucky couldn’t tell the difference between demons or friends.  
  
He started to make himself a cup of coffee, the bitter the better, when the sudden hiss of the coffee machine caught him by surprise—he reacted to the sound, metal arm swinging outwards, sending the glass mug flying halfway across the room.  
  
But the sound of breaking glass never came. An unnatural red glow emerged from the darkness, curling around the cup and catching it in mid-flight. It slowly levitated back in his direction, coming to an eventual stop on the coffee table.  
  
A woman appeared from where the glow came, tired eyes and a headful of messy hair. Someone clearly with trouble sleeping. “Bad cup of coffee?” she asked.     
  
He recognized her. Wanda Maximoff. One of the Sokovian twins. He’d seen her files. Steve had recruited into the Avengers Initiative after the Ultron event. She reminded him of a wild stray with nowhere else to go.  
  
She reminded him of himself.  
  
“Accident,” was all he said as he grabbed the cup.  
  
She shrugged and made herself a cup of Sokovian tea.  
  
He couldn’t tell if she somehow knew that he wasn’t interested in conversation, or perhaps she was the one who wasn’t.  
  
Either way, he was appreciative of the silence. So, they sat there quietly, drinking next to the other, the first in many nights, a silent companionship based not on conversation nor friendship, but the demons in their heads.

 

* * *

  
  
When Bucky came to one morning, enveloped by soft cushions, warm sunlight pleasant against his face, the vestiges of a beautiful dream lingering, dancing on the edges of his consciousness, he knew something was wrong.  
  
Something was horribly, fucking wrong.  
  
And that involved his left arm being fully intact. He grabbed at it with his right, feeling the flesh and blood underneath his fingertips. There were no traces of surgical incisions, nor tissue scarring of any sort. It was as if he’d never lost his arm in the first place.  
  
Then he noticed he wasn’t in the Avengers Facility any longer. The modern bedroom was gone, replaced by something that could only be described as medieval. Stone walls and hung torches, fur sheets and the hilt of a great sword resting by the large wooden bed.  
  
He wondered if he was dreaming. But it all felt too real to be a dream.   
  
Then someone knocked on his door.  
  
He shot up to his feet, trying to find a weapon. The knocking grew louder, more frantic. He grabbed a candlestick holder and slowly, inched the door open.  
  
To his utter surprise, it was Steve.  
  
Not Captain Rogers, but Steve.  
  
1940s Steve.  
  
Skinny and weak, dressed in strange medieval garbs.  
  
“What the hell is going on Ste-”  
  
“Ser Barnes,” Steve interrupted, face too serious to be a joke. “Our lord requires your presence in the Great Hall immediately.”  
  
“What-”  
  
“Immediately,” Steve repeated as he ushered the two of them into the room. “And please, put on something a little bit more presentable. You know how Lord Stark is about appearances.”  
  


End file.
